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PARTISAN REVIEW
succeeded only where the military and economic power of the United
States could be effectively brought into play.
It
failed when its pure
moral force was appealed to. Paradoxically, it failed not because the
peoples whose freedom was at stake were not willing to listen to its
message, but because America, the bearer of the message, did not
know how to live up to it. The fear of Communism blocked the road to
freedom. In the contest between the colonial powers of Europe and
their colonies, the United States took the side of the former, not
because it was in favor of colonialism, but because it was afraid that
Communism might be the alternative to colonialism. The champion
of freedom became the defender and restorer of the colonial status
quo. Making common cause with the colonial powers, it shared with
them the moral taint of colonialism. Thus America came to lose the
peculiar moral aura which it thought had set it apart from all other
nations.
Yet, while America's indiscriminate dogmatic opposition to
Communism, or to what looked like Communism, compelled it to join
the forces of the status quo, its libertarianism and anti-colonialist
tradition evoked its sympathies with the aspirations of the Third
World. That world had painted a picture of its condition flattering to
itself and disparaging to their former colonial masters and the
industrial nations at large. Their miseries and failures are presented as
the responsibility of the developed nations, who have the moral
obligation to right the wrong they have done them. This moral
dichotomy between the' 'good" members of the Third World and the
"evil" colonial exploiters cut across the American dichotomy between
"good" democratic capitalists and "evil" Communists . For many of
the nations of the' 'free world" are sympathetic to one or the other
brands of Communism, or at least to some brand of authoritarianism
which bears the name of "Communism" or "Socialism."
Thus, what occurred on the moral plane was the opposite of what
took place in the arena of power. In the latter, the United States
benefited at the expense of its associates . On the former, it partook in
the disrepute of its associates. Perhaps not surprisingly-considering
the resentment that unchallengeable power evokes-the unprec–
edented power of the United States has not been matched by the
reputation for the benevolent use of that power. That discrepancy
produced the undoing of America's moral position. The Third World
